This poem echos through a negro slave the universal desire of every human being to be free. The poet says that the desire to be free can not be suppressed even though one remains in fetters for years together. The slave who drudged miserably, bound in chains of slavery, was a free man in his dreams. Slavery is a curse and freedom all bliss. Free animals are better than enslaved human being. When life itself becomes all slavery death comes as a liberator. Body is destroyed by death but the soul is free.